The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
presently,--"specially where Cousin Katherine is concerned. I couldn't
go on caring about anybody, irrespective of their conduct, just because
they were they. And yet I can't help seeing it must be tremendously
satisfying to feel like that."
"A thousand pardons," Ludovic murmured, "but like what?"
"Why as Cousin Katherine feels--just whole-heartedly, without analysis,
and without alloy--to feel that no distance, no fatigue, no nothing in
short, matters, so long as she gets to him in time. I don't approve of
such a state of mind, and yet"--Honoria wheeled round, facing the glory
of colour dyeing all the west--"and yet, I'm untrue enough to my own
principles rather to envy it."
She sighed, and that sigh her companion noted and filed for reference.
Indeed, an unusually expansive cheerfulness became, perceptible in Mr.
Quayle.
"By the bye, is there any further news?" she inquired.
"General Ormiston has just had a telegram."
"Anything fresh?"
"Still unconscious, strength fairly maintained."
"Oh! we know that by heart!" Honoria said.
"We do. And we know the consequences of it--the sweet little see-saw of
hope and fear, productive of unlimited discussion and anxiety. No weak
letting one stand at ease about that telegram! It keeps one's nose hard
down on the grindstone."
"If he dies," Honoria said slowly, "if he dies--poor, dear Cousin
Katherine!--When can we hear again?"
"At Turin," Mr. Quayle replied.
Then they both fell silent until the far end of the platform was
reached. And there, once more, Honoria paused, her small head carried
high, her serious eyes fixed upon the sunset. The rosy light falling
upon her failed to disguise the paleness of her face or its slight
angularity of line. She was a little worn and travel-stained, a little
disheveled even. Yet to her companion she had rarely appeared more
charming. She might be tired, she might even be somewhat untidy, but
her innate distinction remained--nay, gained, so he judged, by
suggestion of rough usage endured. Her absolute absence of affectation,
her unself-consciousness, her indifference to adventitious prettinesses
of toilet, her transparent sincerity, were very entirely approved by
Ludovic Quayle.
"Yes, that see-saw of hope and fear must be an awful ordeal, feeling as
she does," Miss St. Quentin said presently. "And yet, even so, I am
uncertain. I can't help wondering which really is best!"
"Again a thousand pardons," the young man put in, "but I venture to
remind you that I was not cradled in the forecourt of the temple of the
Pythian Apollo, but only in the nursery of a conspicuously Philistine,
English country-house."
For the first time during their conversation Honoria looked full at
him. Her glance was very friendly, yet it remained meditative, even a
trifle sad.
"Oh! I know, I'm fearfully inconsequent," she said. "But my head is
simply rattled to pieces by that beastly _waggon-lit_. I had gone back
to what I was thinking about before you joined me, and to what we were
saying just now about Cousin Katherine."
"Yes--yes, exactly," Ludovic put in tentatively. She was going to give
herself away--he was sure of it. And such giving away might make for
opportunity. In spirit, the young man proceeded to take his shoes from
off his feet. The ground on which he stood might prove to be holy.
Moreover Miss St. Quentin's direct acts of self-revelation were few and
far between. He was horribly afraid those same shoes of his might
creak, so to speak, thereby startling her into watchfulness, making her
draw back. But Honoria did not draw back. She was too much absorbed by
her own thought. She continued to contemplate the glory of the flaming
west, her expression touched by a grave and noble enthusiasm.
"I suppose one can't help worrying a little at times--it's laid hold of
me very much during the last month or two--as to what is really the
finest way to take life. One wants to arrive at that fairly early; not
by a process of involuntary elimination, on the burnt-child-fears-the-fire
sort of principle, when the show's more than half over, as so many
people do. One wants to get hold of the stick by the right end now,
while one's still comparatively young, and then work straight along. I
want my reason to be the backbone of my action, don't you know, instead
of merely the push of society and friendship, and superficial odds and
ends of so-called obligation to other people."
"Yes," Mr. Quayle put in again.
"Now, it seems to me, that"--Honoria extended one hand towards the
sunset--"is Cousin Katherine's outlook on life and humanity, full of
colour, full of warmth. It burns with a certain prodigality of beauty,
a superb absence of economy in giving. And that"--with a little shrug
of her shoulders she turned towards the severe, and sombre, eastern
landscape--"that, it strikes me, comes a good deal nearer my own. Which
is best?"
Mr. Quayle congratulated himself upon the removal of his shoes. The
ground was holy--holy to the point of embarrassment even to so
unabashable and ready-tongued a gentleman as himself. He answered with
an unusual degree of diffidence.
"An intermediate position is neither wholly inconceivable nor wholly
untenable, perhaps."
"And you occupy it? Yes, you are very neatly balanced. But then, do you
really get anywhere?"
"Is not that a rather knavish speech, dear Miss St. Quentin?" the young
man inquired mildly.
"I don't know," she answered, "I wish to goodness I did."
Now was here god-given opportunity, or merely a cunningly devised snare
for the taking of the unwary? Ludovic pondered the matter. He gently
kicked a little pebble from the dingy gray-drab of the asphalt on to
the permanent way. It struck one of the metals with a sharp click. A
blue-linen-clad porter, short of stature and heavy of build, lighted
the gas lamps along the platform. The flame of these wavered at first,
and flickered, showing thin and will-o'-the-wisp-like against the great
outspread of darkening country across which the wind came with a
certain effect of harshness and barrenness--the inevitable concomitant
of its inherent purity. And the said wind treated Miss St. Quentin
somewhat discourteously, buffeting her, obliging her to put up both
hands to push back stray locks of hair. Also the keen breath of it
pierced her, making her shiver a little. Both of which things her
companion noting, took heart of grace.
"Is it permitted to renew a certain petition?" he asked, in a low
voice.
Honoria shook her head.
"Better not, I think," she said.
"And yet, dear Miss St. Quentin, pulverised though I am by the weight
of my own unworthiness, I protest that petition is not wholly foreign
to the question you did me the honour to ask me just now."
"Oh! dear me! You always contrive to bring it round to that!" she
exclaimed, not without a hint of petulance.
"Far from it," the young man returned. "For a good, solid eighteen
months, now, I have displayed the accumulated patience of innumerable
asses."
"Of course, I see what you're driving at," she continued hastily. "But
it is not original. It's just every man's stock argument."
"If it bears the hall-mark of hoary antiquity, so much the better. I
entertain a reverence for precedent. And honestly, as common sense
goes, I am not ashamed of that of my sex."
Miss St. Quentin resumed her walk.
"You really think it stands in one's way," she said reflectively, "you
really think it a disadvantage, to be a woman?"
"Oh! good Lord!" Mr. Quayle ejaculated, softly yet with an air so
humorously aghast that it could leave no doubt as to the nature of his
sentiments. Then he cursed himself for a fool. His shoes indeed had
made a mighty creaking! He expected an explosion of scornful wrath. He
admitted he deserved it. It did not come.
Miss St. Quentin looked at him, for a moment, almost piteously. He
fancied her mouth quivered and that her eyes filled with tears. Then
she turned and swung away with her long, easy, even stride. Mentally
the young man took himself by the throat, conscience-stricken at having
humiliated her, at having caused her to fall, even momentarily, from
the height of her serene, maidenly dignity. For once he became
absolutely uncritical, careless of appearances. He fairly ran after her
along the platform.
"Dear Miss St. Quentin," he called to her, in tones of most persuasive
apology.
But Honoria's moment of piteousness was past. She had recovered all her
habitual lazy and gallant grace when he came up with her.
"No--no," she said. "Hear me. I began this rather foolish conversation.
I laid myself open to--well to a snubbing. I got one, anyhow!"
"In mercy don't rub it in!" Mr. Quayle murmured contritely.
"But I did," Honoria returned. "Now it's over and I'm going to pick up
the pieces and put them back in their places--just where they were
before."
"But I protest!--I hailed a new combination. I discover in myself no
wild anxiety to have the pieces put back just where they were before."
"Oh! yes, you do," Honoria declared. "At least, you certainly will when
I explain it to you."--She paused.--"You see," she said, "it is like
this. Living with and watching Cousin Katherine, I have come to know
all that side of things at its very finest."
"Forgive me.--It? What? May I recall to you the fact of the Philistine
nursery?"
The young lady's delicate face straightened.
"You know perfectly well what I mean," she said.--"That which we all
think about so constantly, and yet affect to speak of as a joke or a
slight impropriety--love, marriage, motherhood."
"Yes, Lady Calmady is a past-master in those arts," Mr. Quayle
replied.--Again the ground was holy. He was conscious his pulse
quickened.
"The beauty of it all, as one sees it in her case, breaks one up a
little. There is no laugh left in one about those things. One sees that
to her they are of the nature of religion--a religion pure and
undefiled, a new way of knowing God and of bringing oneself into line
with the truth as it is in Him. But, having once seen that, one can
decline upon no lower level. One grows ambitious. One will have it that
way or not at all."
Honoria paused again. The bleak wind buffeted her. But she was no
longer troubled or chilled by it, rather did it brace her to greater
fearlessness of resolve and of speech.
"You are contemptuous of women," she said.
"I have betrayed characteristics of the ass, other than its patience,"
Ludovic lamented.
"Oh! I didn't mean that," Honoria returned, smiling in friendliest
fashion upon him. "Every man worth the name really feels as you do, I
imagine. I don't blame you. Possibly I am growing a trifle shaky as to
feminine superiority, and woman spelled with a capital letter, myself.
I'm awfully afraid she is safest--for herself and others--under slight
restraint, in a state of mild subjection. She's not quite to be
trusted, either intellectually or emotionally--at least, the majority
of her isn't. If she got her head, I've a dreadful suspicion she would
make a worse hash of creation generally than you men have made of it
already, and that"--Honoria's eyes narrowed, her upper lip shortened,
and her smile shone out again delightfully--"that's saying a very great
deal, you know."
"My spirits rise to giddy heights," Mr. Quayle exclaimed. "I endorse
those sentiments. But whence, oh, dear lady, this change of front?"
"Wait a minute. We've not got to the end of my contention yet."
"The Paris train is late. There is time. And this is all excellent
hearing."
"I'm not quite so sure of that," Honoria said. "For, you see, just in
proportion as I give up the fiction of her superiority, and admit that
woman already has her political, domestic, and social deserts, I feel a